Fic: Imperator

Title: ImperatorAuthor: fourfreedomsPairing: Jack/Spot *gasp* I knowWord Count: 852Rating: Hard RSummary: Spot drags Jack into the shade of an alley.Notes: This was written for maypirate's prompt: Newsies, Spot/Jack, Ink. I know, I know, what kind of order am I writing these prompts in? But I've done three including this one. So worry not.

Jack was a lot of things: articulate, charming, handsome, determined, a bit too much of a dreamer perhaps. He was not a Park Avenue boy, terribly good at arithmetic, and definitely not a queer. Therefore he couldn’t really explain why he was hiding in an alley, back pressed to the brick, as Spot Conlon jerked him off.

He’d said no, voice curt, when Spot first tugged him in the narrow space between the two buildings, fingers hooked into the cheap leather of his belt. He’d shaken his head, tried his best to convey disapproval, but despite the disparity in their sizes, Spot was more than able to strong arm him up against the wall when he was only doing the barest bit to fight him.

“What are you doing?” he’d whispered, like it wasn’t obvious. But Spot knew he meant more than the hand inside Jack’s pants. He meant grander things like newspaper routes and passing people on the street, he meant having to look in the mirror afterwards.

“Listen Cowboy, there’s not a lot in life that’s within my reach, but when something is, I take it.” His voice was dangerous and low, the same one he used when his boys were getting out of line. He punctuated it with a sharp twist of his wrist as he stroked Jack.

Jack’s head fell back on his neck and he let him—why? Out of some morbid sense of curiosity? Because it was a strange and beautiful thing to have all of Spot’s intensity focused upon him. Jack wondered how many of the boys that blindly followed Spot knew this touch, knew what it felt like to have his slender fingers wrapped tight around their cocks while Spot stared them down.

Jack was defenseless in any case. There wasn’t any saying no to this. He’d known since he’d crossed into the shade of the building that his resolve was going to amount to nothing. Sweat rolled down his temple, right past the outer corner of his eye. He let his eyelids fall shut.

Spot was silent as he tugged on Jack’s cock, thumb gliding perfectly over the head, but the nebulous gaze Jack had closed his eyes to spoke almost louder than words.

“I’m not sur—I don’t—” he stuttered and stumbled, breath spilling out like he’d made a dash from the Battery all the way to Medda’s.

“Don’t what? Don’t wanna come?” Spot laughed like he didn’t care what Jack had to say. It made Jack wonder if he could’ve been anybody, that Spot would’ve found somebody else if Jack hadn’t been on the Island. Or did it have everything to do with Jack in some twisted exercise of power. Spot never ceded Jack anything even when he was on the ground that Jack ruled, albeit with a much looser reign.

He pressed his cheek to the brick, sure that he would see all over Spot’s face, ‘you didn’t even want this, but look at you, begging for it with every rock of your hips.’ He couldn’t bare it, but he had to see it out too, because the burn of Spot’s hand was setting his blood alight, until he felt it even in the soles of his feet.

He moaned when Spot slowed down, tried to push up into the grip, get more of what he wanted, what little Spot would let him have. He became conscious of Spot’s hand pressing down over his chest like he could push right through the skin and bone and squeeze Jack’s heart still.

Jack would be leveled, and all those who had come before and tried to do the same—his father, the rich capitalists on Wall street, the Delancey brothers, the headmaster at the children’s home—would stand amazed, because Jack had never blithely bowed his head and accepted his place.

Spot tortured him, the pad of his thumb sliding pre-come around the head of his cock, pressing into the slit and the sensitive underside until Jack couldn’t resist any longer. He came inside the only pair of trousers he had left, Spot’s hand gripping tight, a groan of almost pain falling past his lips.

Spot leaned in, stretching up on almost tiptoes to cut the sound off with his mouth, and this was not the roman triumph, the parade of strength Jack assumed. It was gentle, shy, like Spot could barely believe it was happening. When Jack turned his head, Spot stepped back, fishing a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his hand with it.

Jack’s face was on fire, he could feel the blood beat just below the thin skin of his cheeks. Spot cocked an eyebrow at him and walked back out into the midday light. Jack looked down at himself. There were black prints on his bare forearms, rubbed off from Spot’s hands just like the ink had rubbed right off the paper. He could taste it on the dip of his lower lip, and he knew when he undressed tonight there was going to be a trail of bruise like marks pointing straight at Jack’s misdeeds.

*

The title comes from the reference to the Roman triumph. During the days of the roman republic, a person who had served well in some form of conquest was given the title imperator, from which was later derrived the term empereror. I played with adding SPQR, which was the formal signiture of government in Rome, meaning the "senate and people of rome" and was borne as the Roman vexilloid until the time of Constantine.